kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Chris Pavlina <pavlina.chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2016 at 06:14:26AM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> That's a fair question that I'm not sure I can answer.  Can we
> reasonably assume that the user expects the default action to be edit as
> opposed to view or any other action?  I just don't know.  I do know that
> icons should be reasonable (which is always subject to interpretation)
> metaphors for the action they represent.  In this case the metaphors are
> edit a symbol library and edit a footprint library.

Disclaimer: I haven't looked through the icons yet. I'm at work doing a bit of
https://xkcd.com/303/ .

But... I'm strongly opposed to having a bunch of 'pencils' and stuff in the
icons. KiCad has a *lot* of icons, and the priorities of the icon designer
should be to make them 1) unique, and 2) quickly distinguishable from each
other. The icon doesn't have to say *everything*, nobody is going to break out
a magnifying lens to look at every little thing in the drawing and figure out
what it does when it's a little picture displaying a centimeter across on their
monitor. Icons are there for after you have a rough idea of what the tool does,
to quickly find a target to click on. Adding features like pencils to icons
increases the similarity of different ones, increasing the amount of time it
takes a user to discern them. It's bad design.

> 
> On 7/6/2016 6:10 AM, Simon Wells wrote:
> > As the normal is edit is there really a need of a pencil icon as
> > opposed to just having the magnifying glass on gerbview as its only a
> > viewer?
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 9:22 PM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On 7/6/2016 3:20 AM, Fabrizio Tappero wrote:
> >>> Dear All,
> >>> few years have passed since the last main Kicad icon restyling. In my
> >>> opinion, the current icons are serving us quite well except for very few
> >>> which could use a little face lift.
> >>>
> >>> The few icons that make me particularly itchy are the main Kicad icons
> >>> for which this very imposing pencil does not play very well. I know that
> >>> some of your really want a pencil to suggest that those tools are for
> >>> editing. The truth is that now a days icons can be a little more subtle.
> >>>
> >>> I'd like to propose these new set of icons for the main KiCad toolbar.
> >>> Please let me know what you think and please if there is anybody who
> >>> wants to help out please, now is the moment.
> >>>
> >>> Cheers
> >>> Fabrizio
> >>>
> >>
> >> Fabrizio,
> >>
> >> The symbol library editor bitmap is too generic.  We have two library
> >> editors, a symbol library editor and a footprint library editor.  Your
> >> proposed symbol library editor icon is ambiguous (it just an icon for a
> >> library metaphor).  If it had a symbol such as and op-amp superimposed
> >> over the top of the books, that may be more clear.  I may also need some
> >> edit metaphor (such as the pencil in the current icon) as well because
> >> it could be confused as library viewer rather than and editor.  Although
> >> our current icon is also ambiguous.  It looks like you are going to open
> >> a text editor.
> >>
> >> Your footprint library editor icon could be confusing as well.  Most PCB
> >> layout users are familiar with the concept of component footprints.
> >> It's what they do.  The human footprint may be more familiar to
> >> non-technical users but I don't think that is relevant for KiCad users.
> >> There is also no edit metaphor.  Perhaps you should use your symbol
> >> library editor icon with a component footprint and some edit metaphor
> >> (pencil?) superimposed over top of it for the footprint library editor icon.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Wayne
> >>
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